He supported the Declaration with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly for every word of it. No man's confident and fervent addresses, more than Mr. Adams's encouraged and supported us through the difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. ⁸ --

TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 305.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 268.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I write you this letter as due to a friendship coeval with our government, and now attempted to be poisoned, when too late in life to be replaced by new affections. I had for some time observed in the public papers, dark hints and mysterious innuendoes of a correspondence of yours with a friend, to whom you had opened your bosom without reserve, and which was to be made public by that friend or

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 314.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 273.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

In peace as well as in war, the mind must be kept in motion. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary to keep the waters pure. --

TITLE: To Marquis Layfayette
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The fundamental principle of our government, -- never to entangle us with the broils of Europe. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I have ever deemed it fundamental for the United States never to take active part in the quarrels of Europe. Their political interests are entirely distinct from ours. Their mutual jealousies, their balance of power, their complicated alliances, their forms and principles of government, are all foreign to us. They are nations of eternal war. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 288.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 257.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Peace with all the world, and a quiet descent through the remainder of my time, are now so necessary to my happiness that I am unwilling, by the expression of any opinion before the public, to rekindle ancient animosities,

TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 265.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests, is not the wisest or best to effect the happiness of associated man. [* * *] The trappings of such a machinery consume by their expense those earnings of industry they were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produce, expose liberty to sufferance. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 291.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 227.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

An atheist [* * *] I can never be. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 281.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The government of Athens was that of the people

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 319.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I do not know whether you may recollect how loudly my voice was raised against the establishment of banks in the beginning; but like that of Cassandra it was not listened to. I was set down as a madman by those who have since been victims to them. I little thought then how much [Col 2] I was to suffer by them myself; for I, too, am taken in by endorsements for a friend to the amount of $20,000, for the payment of which I shall have to make sale of that much of my property. And yet the general revolution of fortunes, which these instruments have produced, seems not at all to have cured our country of this mania. --

TITLE: To Thomas Leiper.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 254.

DATE: May. 1823

O'Meara's book proves that nature had denied Bonaparte the moral sense, the first excellence of well organized man. If he could seriously and repeatedly affirm that he had raised himself to power without ever having committed a crime, it proves that he wanted totally the sense of right and wrong. If he could consider the millions of human lives which he had destroyed, or caused to be destroyed, the desolations of countries by plunderings, burnings and famine, the destitutions of lawful rulers of the world without the consent of their constituents, to place his brothers and sisters on their thrones, the cutting up of established societies of men and jumbling them discordantly together again at his caprice, the demolition of the fairest hopes of mankind for the recovery of their rights and amelioration of their condition, and all the numberless train of his other enormities; the man I say, who could consider all these as no crimes, must have been a moral monster, against whom every hand should have been lifted to slay him. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I have just finished reading O'Meara's Bonaparte. It places him in a higher scale of understanding than I had allotted him. I had thought him the greatest of all military captains, but an indifferent statesman, and misled by unworthy passions. The flashes, however, which escaped from him in these conversations with O'Meara, prove a mind of great expansion, although not of distinct development and reasoning. He seizes results with rapidity and penetration, but never explains logically the processes of reasoning by which he arrives at them. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

O'Meara's Bonaparte makes us forget his atrocities for a moment, in commiseration of his sufferings. I will not say that the authorities of the world, charged with the care of their country and people, had not a right to confine him for life, as a lion or a tiger, on the principle of self-preservation. There was no safety to nations while he was permitted to roam at large. But the putting him to

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I wish to see maintained that wholesome distribution of powers established by the Constitution for the limitation of both; and never to see all offices transferred to Washington, where, further withdrawn from the eyes of the people, they May more secretly be bought and sold as at market. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 297.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 232.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

There is no danger I apprehend so much as the consolidation of our government by the noiseless, and, therefore, unalarming instrumentality of the Supreme Court. This is the form in which federalism now arrays itself, and consolidation is the present principle of distinction between republicans and the pseudo-republicans but real federalists. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 278.
EDITION: Ford ed., X, 248.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I have been blamed for saying, that a prevalence of the doctrines of consolidation would one day call for reformation or revolution. I answer by asking if a single State of the Union would have agreed to the Constitution had it given all powers to the General Government? If the whole opposition to it did not proceed from the jealousy and fear of every State, of being subjected to the other States in matters merely its own? And if there is any reason to believe the States more disposed now than then, to acquiesce in this general surrender of all their rights and powers to a consolidated government, one and undivided? --

TITLE: To Samuel Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 293.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 228.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

It is a duty certainly to give our sparings to those who want; but to see also that they are faithfully distributed, and duly apportioned to the respective wants of those receivers. And why give through agents whom we know not, to persons whom we know not, and in countries from which we get no account, when we can do it at short hand, to objects under our eye, through agents we know, and to supply wants we see? --

TITLE: To Mr. Megear.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 286.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

-- The cities [were] the strongholds of federalism. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 292.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 227.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

A city life offers indeed more means of dissipating time, but more frequent, also, and more painful objects of vice and wretchedness. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 310.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Among the midnight appointments of Mr. Adams were commissions to some federal justices of the peace for Alexandria. These were signed and sealed by him but not delivered. I found them on the table of the department of State, on my entrance into office, and I forbade their delivery. Marbury, named in one of them, applied to the Supreme Court for a mandamus to the Secretary of State (Mr. Madison) to deliver the commission intended for him. The Court determined at once that, being an original process, they had no cognizance of it; and, therefore, the question before them was ended. But the Chief Justice went on to lay down what the law would be, had they jurisdiction of the case, to wit: that they should command the [Col 2] delivery. The object was clearly to instruct any other court, having the jurisdiction, what they should do if Marbury should apply to them. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 295.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 230.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The States are now so numerous that I despair of ever seeing another amendment to the Constitution, although the innovations of time will certainly call, and now already call, for some. --

TITLE: To George Hay.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 265.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

It may be impracticable to lay down any general formula of words which shall decide at once and with precision in every case, this limit of jurisdiction. But there are two canons which will guide us safely in most of the cases. 1st. The capital and leading object of the Constitution was to leave with the States all authorities which respected their own citizens only, and to transfer to the United States those which respected citizens of foreign or other States; to make us several as to ourselves, but one as to all others. In the latter case, then, constructions should lean to the general jurisdiction, if the words will bear it, and in favor of the States in the former, if possible to be so construed. And, indeed, between citizens and citizens of the same State and under their own laws, I know but a single case in which a jurisdiction is given to the General Government. That is where anything but gold or silver is made a lawful tender, or the obligation of contracts is any otherwise impaired. The separate legislatures had so often abused that power that the citizens themselves chose to trust it to the general rather than to their own special authorities. 2d. On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 296.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 230.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

To preserve the republican forms and principles of our Constitution, and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that has established, [* * *] are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either we shall be in danger of foundering. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 298.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 232.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Whatever be the Constitution, great care must be taken to provide a mode of amendment, when experience or change of circumstances shall have manifested that any part of it is unadapted to the good of the nation. In some of our States it requires a new authority from the whole people, acting by their representatives, chosen for this express purpose, and assembled in convention. This is found too difficult for remedying the imperfections which experience develops from time to time in an organization of the first impression. A greater facility of amendment is certainly requisite to maintain it in a course of action accommodated to the times and changes through which we are ever passing. --

TITLE: To A. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 323.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

A permanent constitution must be the work of quiet, leisure, much inquiry, and great deliberation. --

TITLE: To A. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 320.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

There are certain principles in which our constitutions all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen. 1. Freedom of religion, restricted only from acts of trespass on that of others. 2. Freedom of person, securing every one from imprisonment, or other bodily restraint, but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the law of habeas corpus. 3. Trial by jury, the best of all safe-guards for the person, the property, and the fame of every individual. 4. The exclusive right of legislation and taxation in the representatives of the people. 5. Freedom of the press, subject only to liability for personal injuries. --

TITLE: To A. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 323.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Certainly provisions are not allowed by the consent of nations, to be contraband but where everything is so, as in the case of a blockaded town, with which all intercourse is forbidden. --

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 270.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Between citizens and citizens of the same State, and under their own laws, I know but a single case in which a jurisdiction is given to the General Government. That is, where anything but gold or silver is made a lawful tender, or the obligation of contracts is any otherwise impaired. The separate legislatures had so often abused that power, that the citizens themselves chose to trust it to the general rather than to their own special authorities. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 296.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 231.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I recollect with pleasure the short opportunity of acquaintance with you afforded me in Paris [* * *] and the fine editions of the classical writers of Greece, which have been announced by you from time to time, have never permitted me to lose the recollection. Until those of Aristotle's Ethics and the Strategicos of Onesander, with which you have now favored me [* * *] I had seen only your Lives of Plutarch. [* * *] I profited much by your valuable scholia. [* * *] You have certainly begun at the right end towards preparing [your countrymen] for the great object they are now contending for, by improving their minds and qualifying them for self-government. For this they will owe you lasting honors. Nothing is more likely to forward this object than a study of the fine models of science left by their ancestors, to whom we also are all indebted for the [Col 2] lights which originally led ourselves out of Gothic darkness. --

TITLE: To A. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I candidly confess, that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida Point, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries an isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 316.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 278.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Certainly, her addition to our confederacy is exactly what is wanting to round our power as a nation to the point of its utmost interest. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 300.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 261.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June 23, 1823

It is better to lie still in readiness to receive that interesting incorporation when solicited by herself. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 300.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 261.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1823

Cuba alone seems at present to hold up a speck of war to us. Its possession by Great Britain would indeed be a great calamity to us. Could we induce her to join us in guaranteeing its independence against all the world, except Spain, it would be nearly as valuable to us as if it were our own. ¹¹⁵ But should she take it, I would not immediately go to war for it; because the first war on other accounts will give it to us; or the island will give itself to us, when able to do so. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 288.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 257.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

You have doubtless seen Timothy Pickering's Fourth of July observations on the Declaration of Independence. If his principles and prejudices, personal and political, gave us no reason to doubt whether he had truly quoted the information he alleges to have received from Mr. Adams, I should then say, that in some of the particulars, Mr. Adams's memory has led him into unquestionable error. At the age of eighty-eight, and fortyseven years after the transactions of Independence, this is not wonderful. Nor should I, at the age of eighty, on the small advantage of that difference only, venture to oppose my memory to his, were it not supported by written notes, taken by myself at the moment, and on the spot. He says. “the Committee of five, to wit, Dr. Franklin, Sherman, Livingston, and ourselves, met, discussed the subject, and then appointed him and myself to make the draft; that we, as a sub-committee, met, and after the urgencies of each on the other, I consented to undertake the task; that the draft being made, we, the sub-committee, met, and conned the paper over, and he does not remember that he made, or suggested a single alteration.” Now these details are quite incorrect. The Committee of five met; no such thing as a sub-committee was proposed, but they unanimously pressed on myself alone to undertake the draft. I consented; I drew it; but before I reported it to the Committee, I communicated it separately to Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams, requesting their correction, because they were the two members of whose judgments and amendments I wished most to have the benefit, before presenting it to the Committee; and you have seen the original paper now in my hands, with the corrections of Dr. Franklin and Mr. Adams interlined in their own handwritings. Their alterations were two or three only, and merely verbal I then wrote a fair copy, reported it to the Committee, and from them, unaltered, to Congress. This personal communication and consultation with Mr. Adams, he has misremembered into the actings of a sub-committee, Pickering's observations, and Mr. Adams's in addition, “that it contained no new ideas, that it is a common-place compilation, its sentiments hackneyed in Congress for two years before, and its essence contained in Otis's pamphlet,” may all be true. Of that I am not to be the judge. Richard Henry Lee charged it as copied from Locke's Treatise on Civil Government. Otis's pamphlet I never saw, and whether I had gathered my ideas [Col 2] from reading on reflection, I do not know. I know only that I turned to neither book nor pamphlet while writing it. I did not consider it as any part of my charge to invent new ideas altogether, and to offer no sentiment which had ever been expressed before. Had Mr. Adams been so restrained, Congress would have lost the benefit of his bold and impressive advocacy of the rights of the Revolution. For no man's confident and fervid addresses, more than Mr. Adam's, encouraged and supported us through the difficulties surrounding us, which, like the ceaseless action of gravity, weighed on us by night and by day. Yet, on the same ground, we May ask what of these elevated thoughts was new, or can be affirmed never before to have entered the conceptions of man? Whether, also, the sentiments of Independence and the reasons for declaring it, which make so great a portion of the instrument, had been hackneyed in Congress for two years before the 4th of July, '76. or this dictum also of Mr. Adams be another slip of memory, let history say. This, however, I will say for Mr. Adams, that he supported the Declaration with zeal and ability, fighting fearlessly for every word of it. As for myself, I thought it a duty to be, on that occasion, a passive auditor of the opinions of others, more impartial judges than I could be, of its merits or demerits. During the debate I was sitting by Dr. Franklin, and he observed that I was writhing a little under the acrimonious criticisms on some of its parts; and it was on that occasion, that by way of comfort, he told me the story of John Thompson, the hatter, and his new sign. Timothy thinks the instrument the better for having a fourth of it expunged. He would have thought it still better, had the other three-fourths gone out also, all but the single sentiment (the only one he approves), which recommends friendship to his dear England, whenever she is willing to be at peace with us. His insinuations are that although “the high tone of the instrument was in unison with the warm feelings of the times, this sentiment of habitual friendship to England should never be forgotten, and that the duties it enjoins should especially be borne in mind on every celebration of this anniversary.” In other words, that the Declaration, as being a libel on the government of England, composed in times of passion, should now be buried in utter oblivion, to spare the feelings of our English friends and Angloman fellow-citizens. But it is not to wound them that we wish to keep it in mind; but to cherish the principles of the instrument in the bosoms of our fellow-citizens; and it is a heavenly comfort to see that these principles are yet so strongly felt. as to render a circumstance so trifling as this lapse of memory of Mr. Adams, worthy of being solemnly announced and supported at an anniversary assemblage of the nation on its birthday. In opposition, however, to Mr. Pickering. I pray God that these principles may be eternal. --

TITLE: To James Madison.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 304.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 267.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1823
See 64.

I observe your toast of Mr. [John] Jay on the 4th of July [1823] wherein you say that the omission of his signature to the Declaration of Independence was by accident. Our impressions as to this fact being different, I shall be glad to have mine corrected, if wrong. Jay, you know, had been in constant opposition to our laboring majority. Our estimate at the time was, that he, Dickinson and Johnson of Maryland, by their ingenuity, perseverance and partiality to our English connection, had constantly kept us a year behind where we ought to have been in our preparations and proceedings. From about the date of the Virginia instructions of May 15th, 1776, to declare Independence, Mr. Jay absented himself from Congress, and never came there again until December, 1778. Of course, he had no part in the discussions or decision of that question. The instructions to their Delegates by the Convention of New York, then sitting, to sign the Declaration, were presented to Congress on the 15th of July only, and on that day the journals show the absence of Mr. Jay, by a letter received from him, as they had done as early as the 29th of May by another letter. And I think he had been omitted by the convention on a new election of Delegates, when they changed their instructions. Of this last fact, however, having no evidence but an ancient impression, I shall not affirm it. But whether so or not, no agency of accident appears in the case. This error of fact, however, whether yours or mine, is of little consequence to the public. But truth being as cheap as error, it is as well to rectify it for our own satisfaction. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 308.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 271.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to atheism by their general dogma, that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a God. Now, one-sixth of mankind only are supposed to be Christians; the other five-sixths, then, who do not believe in the Jewish and Christian revelation, are without a knowledge of the existence of a God! This gives completely a gain de cause to the disciples of Ocellus, Timoeus, Spinosa, Diderot and D'Holbach. The argument which they rest on as triumphant and unanswerable is, that in every hypothesis of cosmogony, you must admit an eternal pre-existence of something; and according to the rule of sound philosophy, you are never to employ two principles to solve a difficulty when one will suffice. They say, then, that it is more simple to believe at once in the eternal pre-existence of the world, as it is now going on, and may forever go on by the principle of reproduction which we see and witness, than to believe in the eternal pre-existence of an ulterior cause, or Creator of the world, a Being whom we see not and know not, of whose form, substance, and mode, or place of existence, or of action, no sense informs us, no power of the mind enables us to delineate or comprehend. On the contrary, I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the universe, in all its parts, general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. The movements of the heavenly bodies, so exactly held in their course by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces; the structure of our earth itself, with its distribution of lands, waters and atmosphere; animal and vegetable bodies, examined in all their minutest particles; insects, mere atoms of life, yet as perfectly organized as man or mammoth; the mineral substances, their generation and uses; it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe, that there is in all this, design, cause, and effect, up to an ultimate cause, a fabricator of all things from matter and motion, their preserver and regulator while permitted to exist in their present forms, and their regeneration into new and other forms. We see, too, evident proofs of the necessity of a superintending power. to maintain the universe in its course and order. Stars, well known, have disappeared, new ones have come into view; comets in their incalculable courses, may run foul of suns and planets, and require renovation under other laws; certain races of animals are become extinct; and were there no restoring power. all existences might extinguish successively, one by one, until all should be reduced to a shapeless chaos. So irresistible are these evidences of an intelligent and powerful agent, that, of the infinite numbers of men who have existed through all time, they have believed, in the proportion of a million at least to a unit, in the hypothesis of an eternal pre-existence of a

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 281.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The rock which I most dread is the discipline of the institution [the University of Virginia] , and it is that on which most of our public schools labor. The [Col 2] insubordination of our youth is now the greatest obstacle to their education. We May lessen the difficulty, perhaps, by avoiding too much government, by requiring no useless observances, none which shall merely multiply occasion for dissatisfaction, disobedience and revolt by referring to the more discreet of themselves the minor discipline, the grayer to the civil magistrates, as in Edinburgh. ¹⁴⁵ --

TITLE: To George Ticknor.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 301.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

We sometimes from dreams pick up some hint worth improving by [* * *] reflection. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 249.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Duane's defection from the republican ranks, his transition to the federalists, and giving triumph, in an important State, to wrong over right, have dissolved, of his own seeking, his connection with us. Yet the energy of his press when our cause was laboring, and all but lost under the overwhelming weight of its powerful adversaries, its unquestionable effect in the revolution produced in the public mind, which arrested the rapid march of our government towards monarchy, overweigh in fact the demerit of his desertion, when we had become too strong to suffer from it sensibly. He is, in truth, the victim of passions which his principles were not strong enough to control. Although, therefore, we are not bound to clothe him with the best robe, to put a ring on his finger, and to kill the fatted calf for him, yet neither should we leave him to eat husks with the swine. ¹⁵² --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of the dead. Those who exist not have no use, or right in it no authority or power over it. --

TITLE: To Thomas Earle.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 310.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

A rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I learn with great satisfaction that wholesome economies have been found, sufficient to relieve us from the ruinous necessity of adding annually to our debt by new loans. The deviser of so salutary a relief deserves truly well of his country. --

TITLE: To Samuel Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 284.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 251.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See Loans.

I hope the choice [of the next President] will fall on some real republican, who will continue the administration on the express principles of the Constitution, unadulterated by constructions reducing it to a blank to be filled with what everyone pleases, and what never was intended. --

TITLE: To Samuel H. Smith.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 264.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Dec. 1823

On the question of the next Presidential election, I am a mere lookeron. I never permit myself to express an opinion, or to feel a wish on the subject. I indulge a single hope only, that the choice may fall on one who will be a friend of peace, of economy, of the republican principles of our Constitution, and of the salutary distribution of powers made by that between the general and the local governments. --

TITLE: To Samuel Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 286.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 253.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Who is to be the next President? [* * *] The question will be ultimately reduced to the northernmost and southernmost candidate. The former will get every federal vote in the Union, and many republicans; the latter, all of those denominated of the old school; for you are not to believe that these two parties are amalgamated, that the lion and the lamb are lying down together. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 319.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The people will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 319.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Whether the state of society in Europe can bear a republican government, I doubted, you know, when with you, and I do now. A hereditary chief, strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The excise system, which I considered as prematurely and unnecessarily introduced, I was [* * *] glad to see fall. It was evident that our existing taxes were then equal to our existing debts. It was clearly foreseen also that the surplus from excise would only become aliment for useless offices, and would be swallowed in idleness by those whom it would withdraw from useful industry. --

TITLE: To Samuel Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 284.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 251.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

If experience has ever taught a truth, it is that a plurality in the Supreme Executive will forever split in the discordant factions, distract the nation, annihilate its energies, and force the nation, to rally under a single head, generally an usurper. We have, I think, fallen on the happiest of all modes of constituting the Executive, that of easing and aiding our President, by permitting him to choose Secretaries of State, of Finance, of War, and of the Navy, with whom he may advise, either separately or all together, and remedy their divisions by adopting or controlling their opinions at his discretion; this saves the nation from the evils of a divided will, and secures to it a steady march in the systematic course which the President may have adopted for that of his administration. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 321.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See President.

Maintain the line of power marked by the Constitution between the two coordinate governments, each sovereign and independent in its department; the States as to everything relating to themselves and their State; the General Government as to everything relating to things or persons out of a particular State. The one may be strictly called the domestic branch of government, which is sectional but sovereign; the other, the foreign branch of government, coordinate with the other domestic, and equally sover eign on its own side of the line. --

TITLE: To Samuel H. Smith.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 263.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Consolidation is the form in which federalism now arrays itself, and is the present principle of distinction between republicans and the pseudo-republicans but real federalists. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 278.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 248.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See Centralization.

The Hartford Convention, the victory of Orleans, the peace of Ghent, prostrated the name of federalism. Its votaries abandoned it through shame and mortification and now call themselves republicans. But the name alone is changed, the principles are the same. [* * *] The line of division now, is the preservation of State rights as reserved in the Constitution, or by strained constructions of that instrument, to merge all into a consolidated government. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 281.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The original objects of the federalists were, 1st, to warp our government more to the form and principles of monarchy; and 2d, to weaken the barriers of the State governments as coordinate powers. In the first they have been so completely foiled by the universal spirit of the nation that they have abandoned the enterprise, shrunk from the odium of their old appellation, taken to themselves a participation of ours, and under the pseudo-republican mask, are now aiming at their second object, and strengthened by unsuspecting or apostate recruits from our ranks, are advancing fast towards an ascendency. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 293.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 228.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See Monarchy.

The federalists, baffled in their schemes to monarchize us, have given up their name, which the Hartford Convention had made odious, and have taken shelter among us and under our name. But they have only changed the point of attack. On every question of the usurpation of State powers by the Foreign or General Government, the same men rally together, force the line of demarcation and consolidate the government. The judges are at their head as heretofore, and are their entering wedge. The true old republicans stand to the line, and will I hope die on it if necessary. --

TITLE: To Samuel H. Smith.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 263.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1823

Whether the state of society in Europe can bear a republican government, I doubted, you know, when with you, and I do now. A hereditary chief, strictly limited, the right of war vested in the legislative body, a rigid economy of the public contributions, and absolute interdiction of all useless expenses, will go far towards keeping the government honest and unoppressive. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

There are certain principles in which the constitutions of our several States all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property and safety of the citizen. [One is] Freedom of Person, securing every one from imprisonment, or other bodily restraint, but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the well-known law of habeas corpus. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 323.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See Habeas Corpus.

On the question whether the principle of “free bottoms making free goods, and enemy bottoms enemy goods”, is now to be considered as established in the law of nations, I will state to you a fact within my own knowledge, which may lessen the weight of our authority as having acted in the war of France and England on the ancient principle “that the goods of an enemy in the bottom of a friend are lawful prize; while those of a friend in an enemy bottom are not so”. Eng [Col 2] land became a party in the general war against France on the 1st of February, 1793. We took immediately the stand of neutrality. We were aware that our great intercourse with these two maritime nations would subject us to harassment by multiplied questions on the duties of neutrality, and that an important and early one would be which of the two principles above stated should be the law of action with us? We wished to act on the new one of “free bottoms, free goods”; and we had established it in our treaties with other nations, but not with England. We determined, therefore, to avoid, if possible, committing ourselves on this question until we could negotiate with England her acquiescence in the new principle. Although the cases occurring were numerous, and the ministers. Genet and Hammond, eagerly on the watch, we were able to avoid any declaration until the massacre of St. Domingo. The whites, on that occasion, took refuge on board our ships, then in their harbor, with all the property they could find room for; and on their passage to the United States, many of them were taken by British cruisers, and their cargoes seized as lawful prize. The inflammable temper of Genet kindled at once, and he wrote, with his usual passion, a letter reclaiming an observance of the principle of “free bottoms, free goods”, as if already an acknowledged law of neutrality. I pressed him in conversation not to urge this point; that although it had been acted on by convention, by the armed neutrality, it was not yet become a principle of universal admission; that we wished indeed to strengthen it by our adoption, and were negotiating an acquiescence on the part of Great Britain: but if forced to decide prematurely, we must justify ourselves by a declaration of the ancient principle, and that no general consent of nations had as yet changed it. He was immovable, and on the 25th of July wrote a letter, so insulting, that nothing but a determined system of justice and moderation would have prevented his being shipped home in the first vessel. I had the day before answered his of the 9th, in which I had been obliged in our own justification, to declare that the ancient was the established principle, still existing and authoritative. Our denial, therefore, of the new principle, and action on the old one, were forced upon us by the precipitation and intemperance of Genet, against our wishes, and against our aim; and our involuntary practice, therefore, is of less authority against the new rule. --

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 271.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Feb. 1823

The permitting an exchange of industries with other nations is a direct encouragement of your own, which without that, would bring you nothing for your comfort, and would of course cease to be produced. --

TITLE: To Samuel Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 286.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 253.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

That our Creator made the earth for the use of the living and not of [the] dead; that those who exist not can have no use nor right in it, no authority or power over it; that one generation of men cannot foreclose or burthen its use to another, which comes to it in its own right and by the same divine beneficence: that a preceding generation cannot bind a succeeding [one] by its laws or contracts; these deriving their obligation from the will of the existing majority, and that majority being removed by death, another comes in its place with a will equally free to make its own laws and contracts; these are axioms so self-evident that no explanation can make them plainer; for he is not to be reasoned with who says that non-existence can control existence, or that nothing can move something. They are axioms also pregnant with salutary consequences. The laws of civil society, indeed, for the encouragement of industry, give the property of the parent to his family on his death, and in most civilized countries permit him even to give it, by testament, to whom he pleases. And it is also found more convenient to suffer the laws of our predecessors to stand on our implied assent, as if positively reenacted, until the existing majority positively repeals them. But this does not lessen the right of that majority to repeal whenever a change of circumstances or of will calls for it. Habit alone confounds what is civil practice with natural right. --

TITLE: To Thomas Earle.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 310.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The daily advance of science will enable the existing generation to administer the commonwealth with increased wisdom. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 327.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 283.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Hereditary bodies, always existing, always on the watch for their own aggrandizement, profit of every opportunity of advancing the privileges of their order, and encroaching on the rights of the people. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 319.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say, by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either contributes by his purse or person to the support of his country. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 319.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The advantages of representative government exhibited in England and America, and recently in other countries, will procure its establishment everywhere in a more or less perfect form; and this will insure the amelioration of the condition of the world. It will cost years of blood, and be well worth them. --

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 262.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The forms of government adapted to the age [of the classical writers of Greece] and [their] country are [not] practicable or to be imitated in our day. [* * *] The circumstances of the world are too much changed for that. The government of Athens, for example, was that of the people of one city, making laws for the whole country subjected to them. That of Laced æmon was the rule of military monks over the laboring class of the people, reduced to abject slavery. These are not the doctrines of the present age. The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say, by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either contributes by his purse or person to the support of his country. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Should these thoughts ²²⁷ on the subject of national government furnish a single idea which may be useful to them [the Greeks] , I shall fancy it a tribute rendered to the manes of your Homer, your Demosthenes, and the splendid constellation of sages and heroes, whose blood is still flowing in your veins, and whose merits are still resting, as a heavy debt, on the shoulders of the living, and the future races of men. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 324.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Greece was the first of civilized nations which presented examples [in government] of what man should be. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

No people sympathize more feelingly than ours with the sufferings of your countrymen, none offer more sincere and ardent prayers to heaven for their success. And nothing indeed but the fundamental principle of our government, never to entangle us with the broils of Europe, could restrain our generous youth from taking some part in this holy cause. Possessing ourselves the combined blessing of liberty and order, we wish the same to other countries, and to none more than yours, which, the first of civilized nations, presented examples of what man should be. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Man is fed with fables through life, leaves it in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye. --

TITLE: To Thomas Cooper.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 286.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

History may distort truth, and will distort it for a time, by the superior efforts at justification of those who are conscious of needing it most. The opening scenes of our present government will not be seen in their true aspect until the letters of the day, now held in private hoards, shall be broken up and laid open to public view. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 292.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 228.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

It is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country. --

TITLE: To Hugh P. Taylor.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 313.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

During the ascendency of Bonaparte, the word among the herd of kings, was sauve qui peut. Each shifted for himself, and left his brethren to squander and do the same as they could. After the battle of Waterloo and the military possession of France, they rallied and combined in common cause, to maintain each other against any similar and future danger. And in this alliance, Louis, now avowedly, and George, secretly but solidly, were of the contracting parties; and there can be no doubt that the allies are bound by treaty to aid England with their armies, should insurrection take place among her people. The coquetry she is now playing off between her people and her allies is perfectly understood by the latter, and accordingly gives no apprehensions to France, to whom it is all explained. The diplomatic correspondence she is now displaying, these double papers fabricated merely for exhibition, in which she makes herself talk of morals and principle, as if her qualms of conscience would not permit her to go all lengths with her Holy Allies, are all to gull her own people. It is a theatrical farce, in which the five powers are the actors, England the Tartuffe, and her people the dupes. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 289.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 258.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June. 1823
See Alliances and Monroe Doctrine.

Our different States have differently modified their several judiciaries as to the tenure of office. Some appoint their judges for a given term of time; some continue them during good behavior, and that to be determined on by the concurring vote of two-thirds of each legislative house. In England they are removable by a majority only of each house. The last is a practicable remedy; the second is not. The combination of the friends and associates of the accused, the action of personal and party passions, and the sympathies of the human heart, will forever find means of influencing one-third of either the one or the other house, will thus secure their impunity, and establish them in fact for life. The first remedy is the better, that of appointing

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 321.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The Republican party believed that men, enjoying in ease and security

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 292.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 227.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The Indian chief said he did not go to war for every petty injury by itself, but put it into his pouch, and when that was full, he then made war. Thank Heaven, we have provided a more peaceable and rational mode of redress. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 295.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 230.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The drunkard, as much as the maniac, requires restrictive measures to save him from the fatal infatuation under which he is destroying his health, his morals, his family, and his usefulness to society. One powerful obstacle to his ruinous self-indulgence would be a price beyond his competence. --

TITLE: To Samuel Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 285.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 252.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

In your passages to and from Washington, should your travelling convenience ever permit a deviation to Monticello, I shall receive you with distinguished welcome. [* * *] I recall with pleasure the remembrance of our joint labors while in Senate together in times of great trial and of hard battling. Battles, indeed, of words, not of blood, as those you have since fought so much for your own glory, and that of your country. --

TITLE: To Andrew Jackson.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 286.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Selections from my letters, after my death, may come out successively as the maturity of circumstances may render their appearance seasonable. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 277.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 248.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Against this tedium vitæ, I am fortunately mounted on a hobby, which, indeed, I should have better managed some thirty or forty years ago; but whose easy amble is still suffcient to give exercise and amusement to an octogenary rider. This is the establishment of a University. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 313.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 272.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See University of Virginia.

Our different States have differently modified their several judiciaries as to the tenure of office. Some appoint their judges for a given term of time; some continue them during good behavior, and that to be determined on by the concurring vote of two-thirds of each legislative house. In England they are removable by a majority only of each house. The last is a practicable remedy; the second is not. The combination of the friends and associates of the accused, the action of personal and party passions, and the sympathies of the human heart, will forever find means of influencing one-third of either the one or the other house, will thus secure their impunity, and establish them in fact for life. The first remedy is the better, that of appointing for a term of years only, with a capacity of reappointment if their conduct has been approved. --

TITLE: To A. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 321.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I should greatly prefer [* * *] four judges to any greater number. Great lawyers are not over abundant, and the multiplication of judges only enables the weak to out-vote the wise, and three concurrent opinions out of four give a strong presumption of right. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 278.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 249.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

At the establishment of our Constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the Constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is [Col 2] not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account. --

TITLE: To A. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Trial by jury is the best of all safeguards for the person, the property, and the fame of every individual. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 323.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Representative government is now well understood to be a necessary check on kings, whom they will probably think it more prudent to chain and tame, than to exterminate. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 307.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 270.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

All the energies [ of European nations] are expended in the destruction of the labor, property and lives of their people. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 288.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 257.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

To constrain the brute force of the people, the European governments deem it nec

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 291.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 226.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I am not a friend to a scrupulous purism of style. I readily sacrifice the niceties of syntax to euphony and strength. It is by boldly neglecting the rigorisms of grammar that Tacitus has made himself the strongest writer in the world. The hyperesthetics call him barbarous; but I should be sorry

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 273.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I owe you particular thanks for the copy of your translation of Buttman's Greek Grammar. [* * *] A cursory view of it promises me a rich mine of valuable criticism. I observe he goes with the herd of grammarians in denying an Ablative case to the Greek language. I cannot concur with him in that, but think with the Messrs, of Port Royal who admit an Ablative. And why exclude it? Is it because the Dative and Ablative in Greek are always of the same form? Then there is no Ablative to the Latin plurals, because in them, as in Greek, these cases are always in the same form. The Greeks recognized the Ablative under the appellation of the &pgr;&tgr;&ohgr;&sgr;&igr;&sfgr; &agr;&phgr;&agr;&igr;&rgr;&egr;&tgr;&igr;&khgr;&eegr;, which I have met with and noted from some of the scholiasts, without recollecting where. Stephens, Scapula, Hederic acknowledge it as one of the significations of the word [&agr;&phgr;&agr;&igr;&rgr;&egr;&mgr;&agr;&ugr;&kgr;&ogr;&sfgr;] . That the Greeks used it can not be denied. For one of multiplied examples which may be produced take the following from the Hippolytus of Euripides: “&egr;&igr;&pgr;&egr; &tgr;&ohgr; &tgr;&rgr;&ogr;&pgr;&ohgr;, &dgr;&igr;&kgr;&eegr;&sfgr; &Egr;&pgr;&agr;&igr;&sgr;&egr;&ngr; &agr;&ugr;&tgr;&ogr;&ugr; &rgr;&ogr;&pgr;&tgr;&rgr;&ogr;&ugr;,” “dice quo modo justitiæ clava percussit eum” “Quo modo” are Ablatives, then why not &tgr;&ohgr; &tgr;&rgr;&ogr;&pgr;&ohgr;? And translating it into English, should we use the Dative ²⁸⁵ or Ablative preposition? It is not perhaps easy to define very critically what constitutes a case in the declension of nouns. All agree as to the Nominative that it is simply the name of the thing. If we admit that a distinct case is constituted by any accident or modification which changes the relation which that bears to the actors or action of the sentence, we must agree to the six cases at least; because for example, to a thing, and from a thing are very different accidents to the thing. It may be said that if every distinct accident or change of relation constitutes a different case, then there are in every language as many cases as there are prepositions; for this is the peculiar office of the preposition. But because we do not designate by special names all the cases to which a noun is liable, is that a reason why we should throw away half of those we have, as is [Col 2] done by those grammarians who reject all cases, but the Nominative, Genitive, and Accusative, and in a less degree by those also who reject the Ablative alone? As pushing the discrimination of all the possible cases to extremities leads us to nothing useful or practicable, I am contented with the old six cases, familiar to every cultivated language, ancient and modern, and well understood by all. I acknowledge myself at the same time not an adept in the metaphysical speculations of Grammar. By analyzing too minutely we often reduce our subject to atoms, of which the mind loses its hold. --

TITLE: To Edward Everett.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 272.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Laws are made for men of ordinary understanding, and should therefore, be construed by the ordinary rules of common sense. Their meaning is not to be sought for in metaphysical subtleties, which may make anything mean everything or nothing, at pleasure. It should be left to the sophisms of advocates, whose trade it is, to prove that a defendant is a plaintiff,

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 297.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 231.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Our legislatures are composed of two houses, the Senate and Representatives, elected in different modes, and for different periods, and in some States, with a qualified veto in the Executive chief. But to avoid all temptation to superior pretensions of the one over the other house, and the possibility of either erecting itself into a privileged order, might it not be better to choose at the same time and in the same mode, a body sufficiently numerous to be divided by lot into two separate houses, acting as independently as the two houses in England, or in our governments, and to shuffle their names together and redistribute them by lot, once a week for a fortnight? This would equally give the benefit of time and separate deliberation, guard against an absolute passage by acclamation, derange cabals, intrigues, and the count of noses, disarm the ascendency which a popular demagogue might at any time obtain over either house, and render impossible all disputes between the two houses, which often form such obstacles to business. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 321.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Possessing ourselves the combined blessing of liberty and order, we wish the same to other countries. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

A city life offers [* * *] more means of dissipating time, but more frequent also and more painful objects of vice and wretchedness. New York, for example, like London seems to be a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature. Philadelphia doubtless has its share. Here [Virginia] , on the contrary, crime is scarcely heard of, breaches of order rare, and our societies, if not refined, are rational, moral and affectionate at least. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 310.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I learn with great satisfaction that wholesome economies have been found, sufficient to relieve us from the ruinous necessity of adding annually to our debt by new loans. The deviser of so salutary a relief deserves truly well of his country. --

TITLE: To Samuel Smith.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 284.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 251.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

In truth man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 322.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Man is a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 291.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 227.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Men, enjoying in ease and security, the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves, and to follow their reason as their guide, [* * *] [are] more easily and safely governed than with minds nourished in error, and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence, and oppression. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 292.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 227.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The practice of Judge Marshall, of travelling out of his case to prescribe what the law would be in a moot case not before the court, is very irregular and very censurable. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 295.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 230.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I do not know that it is a duty to disturb by missionaries the religion and peace of other

TITLE: To Mr. Megear.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 287.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The question presented by the letters ³³⁹

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 315.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 277.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Oct. 1823
See Policy.

I had had great hopes that while in your present office you would break up the degrading practice of considering the President's house as a general tavern, and economize sufficiently to come out of it clear of difficulties. I learn the contrary with great regret. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 246.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The moral sense [is] the first excellence of well-organized man. --

TITLE: To John Adams.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 275.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Such indeed are the different circumstances, prejudices, and habits of different nations, that the constitution of no one would be reconcilable to any other in every point. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 320.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government, is so arrogant, so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation, as well as moral sentiment, enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one, and our equal execrations against the other. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 287.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 257.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The European are nations of eternal war. All their energies are expended in the destruction of the labor, property, and lives of their people. --

TITLE: To President Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 288.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 257.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

New York, like London, seems to be a cloacina of all the depravities of human nature. --

TITLE: To William Short.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 310.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

I read but a single paper, and that hastily. I find Horace and Tacitus so much better writers than the champions of the gazettes, that I lay those down to take up these with great reluctance. --

TITLE: To James Monroe.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 287.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 256.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary to keep the waters pure. --

TITLE: To Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823
See Press, Freedom of.

This formidable censor of the public functionaries, by arraigning them at the tribunal of public opinion, produces reform peaceably, which must otherwise be done by revolution. It is also the best instrument for enlightening the mind of man, and improving him as a rational, moral, and social being. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 324.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted, when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure. --

TITLE: To the Marquis de Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 325.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 280.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

Possessing ourselves the combined blessing of liberty and order, we wish the same to other countries. --

TITLE: To M. Coray.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 318.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

If not ancient, it is equal to the best morsels of antiquity. --

TITLE: To Marquis Lafayette.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 326.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 282.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: 1823

You will be told that parties are now all amalgamated; the wolf now dwells with the lamb, and the leopard lies down with the kid. It is true that federalism has changed its name and hidden itself among us. Since the Hartford convention it is deemed even by themselves a name of reproach. In some degree, too, they have varied their object. To monarchize this nation they see is impossible; the next best thing in their view is to consolidate it into one government as a premier pas to monarchy. The party is now as strong

TITLE: To Albert Gallatin.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 262.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: Aug. 1823

At the formation of our government, many had formed their political opinions on European writings and practices, believing the experience of old countries, and especially of England, abusive as it was, to be a safer guide than mere theory. The doctrines of Europe were, that men in numerous associations cannot be restrained within the limits of order and justice, but by forces physical and moral, wielded over them by authorities independent of their will. Hence their organization of kings, hereditary nobles, and priests. Still further to constrain the brute force of the people, they deem it necessary to keep them down by hard labor, poverty and ignorance, and to take from them, as from bees, so much of their earnings, as that unremitting labor shall be necessary to obtain a sufficient surplus barely to sustain a scanty and miserable life. And these earnings they apply to maintain their privileged orders in splendor and idleness, to fascinate the eyes of the people, and excite in them an humble adoration and submission, as to an order of superior beings. Although few among us had gone all these lengths of opinion, yet many had advanced, some more, some less, on the way. And in the convention which formed our government, they endeavored to draw the cords of power as tight as they could obtain them, to lessen the dependence of the general functionaries on their constituents, to subject to them those of the States, and to weaken their means of maintaining the steady equilibrium which the majority of the convention had deemed salutary for both branches, general and local. To recover, therefore, in practice the powers which the nation had refused, and to warp to their own wishes those actually given, was the steady object of the Federal party. Ours, on the contrary, was to maintain the will of the majority of the convention, and of the people themselves. We believed, with them, that man was a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and that he could be restrained [Col 2] from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will. We believed that the complicated organization of kings, nobles, and priests, was not the wisest nor best to effect the happiness of associated man; that wisdom and virtue were not hereditary; that the trappings of such a machinery, consumed by their expense, those earnings of industry, they were meant to protect, and, by the inequalities they produced, exposed liberty to sufferance. We believed that men, enjoying in ease and security the full fruits of their own industry, enlisted by all their interests on the side of law and order, habituated to think for themselves, and to follow their reason as their guide, would be more easily and safely governed, than with minds nourished in error, and vitiated and debased, as in Europe, by ignorance, indigence and oppression. The cherishment of the people then was our principle, the fear and distrust of them, that of the other party. Composed, as we were, of the landed and laboring interests of the country, we could not be less anxious for a government of law and order than were the inhabitants of the cities, the strongholds of federalism. And whether our efforts to save the principles and form of our Constitution have not been salutary, let the present republ can freedom, order and prosperity of our country determine. --

TITLE: To William Johnson.
EDITION: Washington ed. vii, 290.
EDITION: Ford ed., x, 226.
PLACE: Monticello
DATE: June, 1823

Let me implore you to finish your history of parties, leaving the time of publication to the state of things you may deem proper, but taking especial care that we do not lose it altogether. We have been too careless of our future reputation, while our tories will omit nothing to place us in the wrong. Besides the five-volumed libel which represents us as struggling for office, and not at all to prevent our government from being administered into a monarchy, the Life of Hamilton is in the hands of a man who, to the bitterness of the priest, adds the rancor of the fiercest federalism. Mr. Adams's papers, too, and his biography will descend, of course, to his son whose pen, you know, is pointed, and his prejudices not in our favor. And, doubtless, other things are in preparation, unknown to us. On our part, we are depending on truth to make itself known, while history is taking a contrary set which may become too inveterate for correction. Mr. Madison will probably leave something, but, I believe, only particular passages of our history, and these chiefly confined to the period between the dissolution of the old and commencement of the new government, which is peculiarly within his knowledge. After he joined us in the administration, he had no leisure to write. This, too, was my case. But although I had not time to prepare anything express, my letters (all preserved ) will furnish the daily occurrences and views from my return from Europe in 1790, till I retired finally from office. These will command more conviction than anything I could have written after my retirement; no day having ever passed during that period without a letter to somebody. Written, too, in the moment, and in the warmth and freshness of fact and feeling, they will carry internal evidence that what they breathe is genuine. Selections from these, after my death, may come out successively as the maturity of circumstances May render their appearance seasonable. But multiplied testimony, multiplied views will be necessary to give solid establishment to truth. Much is known to one which is not known to